In Q3 2020, the economy of China advanced 4.9%. For the first nine months of the year, China GDP has increased which can recover the first half-year loss. In the global aspect, the medical equipment and work from work technology are demanding, with the Chinese government's support for those businesses. It reflects the positive effect on the Chinese economy.
economy advancement of China
While the media equipment and work from technology are demanding, how these industries can be affected between marketing industry and these industries. Let’s discuss this further below.
According to WARC dataset projection, the advertising investment in China is expected to fall 8.6% due to the significant drop in traditional media, including newspaper and other printed media, which declined 41.2% YoY.
For China online media investment, social media ad spend had recorded positive growth, which accounted for 23.8% YoY changes. The increase was driven by various newly-developed ad formats on social media platforms, such as short video formats on Douyin and Wechat.
China media spend statistics
The outbreak of COVID has brought a pessimistic macro-economic outlook, with a negative growth across most product categories, except the healthcare and telecoms industries, largely due to the high demand for healthcare products, such as face masks, medicines and gloves. For telecoms, the remote working practice in the workplace causes a tremendous increase in telecom products. COVID didn't affect the social media spend as 25.3% is on par with pre-COVID prediction, and brands rely more on social media for communicate due to lockdown, so digital is playing a pivot role in communications and channel mix.
China product category spend
While the big surprise is - cinema and OOH, which were supposed to grow, but drop dramatically due to lockdown and people are staying in, particularly in the urban area.
Summary
To sum up, the WARC China ad Predict report, the traditional media advertising investment in China had been badly affected this year, the digital media advertising spends, especially in social media, showed a steady increase. The market as a whole is conservative with marketing spend but we do see strong potential in sectors that are COVID-proof.